The present disclosure relates to respiratory care devices, and more particularly to operating, including communicating and controlling, respiratory care devices such as oxygen concentrators, ventilators, CPAP machines, etc.
As home respiratory care devices, such as home medical oxygen concentrators, continue to evolve, they have started to progress from simple electro-mechanical devices to computer controlled systems. With this evolution, the diagnosis and repair of devices or the upgrading of devices with new software controlled functionality has become more difficult. The complexity of these new systems often makes them too complicated for traditional field technicians to service the devices efficiently. As such, technicians have to either guess at a probable cause and repair based upon best available data, or return the device to their repair shop for diagnosis by a better trained technician. These options result in taking the device out of service, creating an inconvenience for the patient using the device, and resulting in a loss of revenue for the company that owns and operates the device.
The level of expertise, training and education of personnel sent into the field to diagnose and solve problems with respiratory care devices has to be high. They not only have to know how the equipment works in normal operation but also under fault conditions. To diagnose the cause of failure or to determine if, for example, the oxygen concentrator is working properly takes months of experience and training. If an untrained or low level technician is sent on a service call, they often have to bring the device back to a trained technician for service. The untrained or low level technician may call the trained technician and try to describe the device's conditions, but this makes service calls lengthy and seldom results in fixed respiratory care devices, and the devices usually have to be sent to a skilled technician anyway. Additionally, a respiratory care device generally cannot be updated with important software changes without being returned to a skilled technician.
Also, often, a respiratory care device has a small data memory and a limited user interface that makes even trained technicians troubleshooting and diagnostic very difficult.